It’s Tuesday afternoon local time, and I’m sitting in the coolest coffee shop in Taipei, reflecting on the week. This was my first WordCamp Asia and my first time in the continent of Asia. Now, this was not my first WordCamp. In fact, this was my 52nd. 😳 But being it was my first time in the WordPress Asia community, it came with all of the first-time feels. 🥰
Fred’s Café. Cutie Taipei coffee shop.
WordCamp Asia: At a Glance
WCAsia is a flagship WordCamp serving the Asian WordPress community. Over 1300 tickets were sold and people came from all over the world to attend. This was the second iteration of WCAsia. The first took place in Bangkok, Thailand, and this year’s WordCamp took place in Taipei, Taiwan.
Shusei at WordCamp Asia
WordCamp Asia had two days of tracks and workshops, along with a Contributor Day, to kick the event off. I attended Contributor Day and contributed to the “Community Team” of course. But the biggest highlight was emceeing. I was chosen to emcee Track 3 on Day 1 and had a blast!
I love emceeing!
Connections
As the Community Manager of Elegant Themes, I get to engage with our community and that’s just what I did this week. I got to meet many attendees who use Divi and were super eager to connect. What I heard most was how they love our product, our blog is incredible, and questions about Divi 5’s release. 😅
meeting the community 🥰
One of my favorite interactions was with Anne Bovelett, who made me feel appreciated. We had a great exchange about the importance of Accessibility. She’s an Accessibility Advocate and incredible.
Me and Anne! 😻
Super notable was connecting with Darrel Wilson, a well-known Divi YouTuber. We met at the Freemius Maker’s Meetup (thanks for the invite Vova 🙏🏼) and then got to enjoy dinner together. Darrel has been creating WordPress tutorials for Divi (and other page builders) on YouTube for years and has quite a following (check out his website). Darrel’s been on my radar to connect with, so it was quite serendipitous!
Me and Darrel.
A cherry on top was meeting a fellow Elegant Themes co-worker! We’re a fully distributed company with 100ish of us spread all over the globe, and since the pandemic, we haven’t had any all-hands meetups, so I was super ecstatic for the opportunity to connect with a fellow ETer. Rea and I got to connect after the closing remarks. She was so kind, and I was bummed we couldn’t spend more time together. It was short but so sweet!
Me and Rea. Short but sweet.
Next Year
The next WordCamp Asia will be held in Manila in February 2025. Will you be there? Maybe next year the whole team will attend.
For now, be sure to visit a Divi Meetup near you (or not so near) for your Divi community fix, and maybe I’ll catch you in Torino at WordCamp Europe.
